Medialunas, helado and the café notable: a sweet day in Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires keeps its own hours, and its cafés and heladerías keep them with it: breakfast in a café of 1858, tea under stained glass in Almagro, speciality coffee in Palermo and helado on Corrientes long after the theatres empty. A day in the city’s sweet side, with the places in our guide.

In Buenos Aires a café is never just for coffee. It is where you read the paper, meet a friend, write a letter or simply watch the city go by, and the best of them have been doing so for well over a century. Add the porteño love of helado, served from family counters until after midnight, and you have a day that can be planned entirely around coffee, cake and ice cream.

The cafés notables

Start on the Avenida de Mayo at the Gran Café Tortoni, at number 825, which calls itself the oldest café in the city: it opened in 1858, in the French style, and it is open every day from morning to evening. Order a coffee and medialunas, the small, sweet croissants of every porteño breakfast, and ask about the tango shows held in its rooms.

The city calls its historic cafés bares notables, and several in our guide carry the title. The Café de los Angelitos, at Rivadavia 2100, opened in 1890 and still stages a tango dinner show in the evening. In Recoleta, La Biela, at Avenida Quintana 600, faces the Plaza Francia: sit on its terrace under the great rubber tree after a walk round the cemetery.

Tea in the grand manner

Afternoon tea is taken seriously here. Las Violetas, at Avenida Rivadavia 3899 in Almagro, was founded in 1884; in its own words it has French stained-glass windows and Italian marble floors, and the building was declared a historic site of the city in 1998. Its tea arrives on tiered stands, generous enough to share.

For something grander, the Alvear Palace Hotel serves breakfast and tea in L’Orangerie, under the glass of its Jardin d’Hiver, at Avenida Alvear 1891. Book ahead at weekends, when Recoleta comes out in its best.

In Buenos Aires the heladerías stay open as late as the theatres.

The new coffee

A newer Buenos Aires roasts its own beans. Full City Coffee House has roasted speciality coffee since 2011 at Thames 1535, in Palermo, and trains baristas too; its seasonal limited editions are worth taking home. Cuervo Café roasts its own and runs cafés across the city, among them El Salvador 4580 in Palermo, while Ninina, at Gorriti 4738, bakes its own bread and pastries for a long Palermo breakfast.

Helado after dark

Then there is helado. The city’s ice cream owes much to immigrant families, and two of the oldest still keep their counters. Heladería Cadore takes its name from the Alpine region north of Venice where the Olivotti family first made ice cream; since 1957 it has worked from the same shop at Avenida Corrientes 1695, with no branches, making everything daily on the premises.

Cadore opens from noon until midnight, and until 2am on Fridays and Saturdays, so it fits as neatly after the theatre as after lunch. Scannapieco was founded in 1938 by Andrés and Josefina Scannapieco; its mother house is at Avenida Álvarez Thomas 10, with a counter in the Paseo La Plaza at Corrientes 1660, among the theatres. Look for the old-fashioned postres there: Copa Melba, fruit sundaes and banana split.

Our advice: have breakfast at the Tortoni early, before the queues, keep the afternoon for tea at Las Violetas or the Alvear, and save your helado for late evening on Corrientes, as the porteños do.